Agent interfaces are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their ability to facilitate a variety of actions and allow access to numerous types of application data and/or application systems across multiple forms of communication. For example, a typical customer service application may include an agent interface to allow a customer service agent to navigate among a variety of types of data related to a customer and to products. Such product data may include a knowledge base or other database of product information, while customer data may include contact information, service request information, order information, activity information, and so on. Actions that that a customer service agent may want to perform may include, for example, order entry, status checks and service requests. A customer service agent interacting with a customer may need to navigate quickly all of these types of information and actions during, for example, the course of a single telephone conversation or online pseudo-real-time communication. Additionally, a subset of both the customer data and the product data may be available to the customer for self-guided retrieval of information without agent intervention.
In order to provide personalized service, it is desirable that customer service agents appear to “know” the customer immediately when starting an interaction and throughout its duration. It is also critical that the customer service agent be able to apply that knowledge to efficiently execute actions such as closing a sale. Since customer service centers receive a large volume and variety of customer interactions during a typical day, each agent needs to have quick access to important customer information, such as contact name, account number, phone number, and so on, in the performance of actions using the user interface. Additionally, customer service agents need to find, in the most efficient manner possible, the information needed by the applications that receive entry of orders and perform online business. When an agent wastes time by fumbling with an agent interface for an action, such as a sale, possibly incorrectly entering data, or offering a product that the customer will find inappropriate to his needs, costs are increased. These costs come in both the form of agent time and the form of customer dissatisfaction.